Abstract
The recognition of symbols in graphic documents is an intensive research activity in the community of pattern recognition and document analysis. A key issue in the interpretation of maps, engineering drawings, diagrams, etc. is the recognition of domain dependent symbols according to a symbol database. In this work we first review the most outstanding symbol recognition methods from two different points of view: application domains and pattern recognition methods. In the second part of the paper, open and unaddressed problems involved in symbol recognition are described, analyzing their current state of art and discussing future research challenges. Thus, issues such as symbol representation, matching, segmentation, learning, scalability of recognition methods and performance evaluation are addressed in this work. Finally, we discuss the perspectives of symbol recognition concerning to new paradigms such as user interfaces in handheld computers or document database and WWW indexing by graphical content.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Blostein, D.: General diagram-recognition methodologies. In Kasturi, R., Tombre, K., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Methods and Applications. Springer, Berlin (1996) 106–122 Vol. 1072 of LNCS.
Chhabra, A.: Graphic symbol recognition: An overview. In Tombre, K., Chhabra, A., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Algorithms and Systems. Springer, Berlin (1998) 68–79 Vol. 1389 of LNCS.
Cordella, L., Vento, M.: Symbol and shape recognition. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Recent Advances. Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2000) 167–182 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Kasturi, R., Luo, H.: Research advances in graphics recognition: An update. In Murshed, N., Bortolozzi, F., eds.: Advances in Document Image Analysis, First Brazilian Symposium, BSDIA’97. Springer, Berlin (1997) 99–110 Vol. 1339 of LNCS.
Chen, Y., Langrana, N., Das, A.: Perfecting vectorized mechanical drawings. Computer Vision and Image Understanding 63 (1996) 273–286.
Dori, D., Liu, W.: Sparse pixel vectorization: An algorithm and its performance evaluation. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 21 (1999) 202–215.
Nagasamy, V., Langrana, N.: Engineering drawing processing and vectorisation system. Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing 49 (1990) 379–397.
Tombre, K., Ah-Soon, C., Dosch, P., Masini, G., Tabonne, S.: Stable and robust vectorization: How to make the right choices. In: Proceedings of Third IAPR Work. on Graphics Recognition. (1999) 3–16 Jaipur, India.
Phillips, I., Chhabra, A.: Empirical performance evaluation of graphics recognition systems. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 21 (1999) 849–870.
Chhabra, A., Phillips, I.: The second international graphics recognition contest-raster to vector conversion: A report. In Tombre, K., Chhabra, A., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Algorithms and Systems. Springer, Berlin (1998) 390–410 Vol. 1389 of LNCS.
Chhabra, A., Philips, I.: Performance evaluation of line drawing recognition systems. In: Proceedings of 15th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. Volume 4. (2000) 864–869 Barcelona, Spain.
Groen, F., Sanderson, A., Schlag, F.: Symbol recognition in electrical diagrams using probabilistic graph matching. PRL 3 (1985) 343–350.
Jiang, X., Munger, A., Bunke, H.: Synthesis of representative graphical symbols by computing generalized median graph. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Recent Advances. Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2000) 183–192 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Kuner, P., Ueberreiter, B.: Pattern recognition by graph matching. combinatorial versus continuous optimization. Int. Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence 2 (1988) 527–542.
Lee, S.: Recognizing hand-written electrical circuit symbols with attributed graph matching. In Baird, H., Bunke, H., Yamamoto, K., eds.: Structured Document Analysis. Springer Verlag, Berlin (1992) 340–358.
Sato, T., Tojo, A.: Recognition and understanding of hand-drawn diagrams. In: Proceedings of 6th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. (1982) 674–677.
Messmer, B., Bunke, H.: Automatic learning and recognition of graphical symbols in engineering drawings. In Kasturi, R., Tombre, K., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Methods and Applications. Springer, Berlin (1996) 123–134 Vol. 1072 of LNCS.
Muller, S., Rigoll, G.: Engineering drawing database retrieval using statistical pattern spotting techniques. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Recent Advances. Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2000) 246–255 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Lladós, J., Sánchez, G., Martí, E.: A string-based method to recognize symbols and structural textures in architectural plans. In Tombre, K., Chhabra, A., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Algorithms and Systems. Springer, Berlin (1998) 91–103 Vol. 1389 of LNCS.
Valveny, E., Martí, E.: Hand-drawn symbol recognition in graphic documents using deformable template matching and a bayesian framework. In: Proceedings of 15th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. Volume 2. (2000) 239–242 Barcelona, Spain.
Chang, M., Chen, S.: Deformed trademark retrieval based on 2d pseudo-hidden markov model. PR 34 (2001) 953–967.
Cortelazzo, G., Mian, G., Vezzi, G., Zamperoni, P.: Trademark shapes descrition by string matching techniques. PR 27 (1994) 1005–1018.
Segen, J.: From features to symbols: Learning relational models of shape. In Simon, J., ed.: From Pixels to Features. Elsevier Science Publishers B. V. (North-Holland) (1989) 237–248.
Bunke, H.: Attributed programmed graph grammars and their application to schematic diagram interpretation. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 4 (1982) 574–582.
Fahn, C., Wang, J., Lee, J.: A topology-based component extractor for understanding electronic circuit diagrams. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 2 (1989) 1140–1157.
Kiyko, V.: Recognition of objects in images of paper based line drawings. In: Proceedings of Third IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’95. Volume 2., Montreal, Canada (1995) 970–973.
Collin, S., Colnet, D.: Syntactic analysis of technical drawing dimensions. Int. Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence 8 (1994) 1131–1148.
Dori, D.: A syntactic/geometric approach to recognition of dimensions in engineering machine drawings. Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing 47 (1989) 271–291.
Joseph, S., Pridmore, T.: Knowledge-directed interpretation of mechanical engineering drawings. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 14 (1992) 928–940.
Min, W., Tang, Z., Tang, L.: Using web grammar to recognize dimensions in engineering drawings. PR 26 (1993) 1407–1916.
Fahmy, H., Blostein, D.: A survey of graph grammars: Theory and applications. In: Proceedings of 12th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (a). (1994) 294–298 Jerusalem, Israel.
Sánchez, G., Lladós, J.: A graph grammar to recognize textured symbols. In: Proceedings of 6th Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (2001) Seattle, USA.
Kosmala, A., Lavirotte, S., Pottier, L., Rigoll, G.: On-Line Handwritten Formula Recognition using Hidden Markov Models and Context Dependent Graph Grammars. In: Proceedings of 5th Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (1999) 107–110 Bangalore, India.
Lavirotte, S., Pottier, L.: Optical formula recognition. In: Proceedings of 4th Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (1997) 357–361 Ulm, Germany.
Bley, H.: Segmentation and preprocessing of electrical schematics using picture grafs. Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing 28 (1984) 271–288.
Habacha, A.: Structural recognition of disturbed symbols using discrete relaxation. In: Proceedings of 1st. Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (1991) 170–178 Saint Malo, France.
Vaxiviere, P., Tombe, K.: Celesstin: CAD conversion of mechanical drawings. Computer 25 (1992) 46–54.
Myers, G., Mulgaonkar, P., Chen, C., DeCurtins, J., Chen, E.: Verification-based approach for automated text and feature extraction from raster-scanned maps. In Kasturi, R., Tombre, K., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Methods and Applications. Springer Verlag, Berlin (1996) 190–203.
Hartog, J., Kate, T., Gerbrands, J.: Knowledge-based segmentation for automatic map interpretation. In Kasturi, R., Tombre, K., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Methods and Applications. Springer, Berlin (1996) Vol. 1072 of LNCS.
Ah-Soon, C., Tombre, K.: Architectural symbol recognition using a network of constraints. PRL 22 (2001) 231–248.
Aoki, Y., Shio, A., Arai, H., Odaka, K.: A prototype system for interpreting hand-sketched floor plans. In: Proceedings of 13th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. (1996) 747–751 Vienna, Austria.
Pasternak, B.: Processing imprecise and structural distroted line drawings by an adaptable drawing interpretation system. In Dengel, A., Spitz, L., eds.: Document Analysis Systems. World Scientific (1994) 349–365.
Cheng, T., Khan, J., Liu, H., Yun, Y.: A symbol recognition system. In: Proceedings of Second IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’93. (1993) 918–921 Tsukuba, Japan.
Reiher, E., Li, Y., Donne, V., Lalonde, M., C. Hayne, Zhu, C.: A system for efficient and robust map symbol recognition. In: Proceedings of the 13th IAPR Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. Volume 3., Viena, Austria (1996) 783–787.
Anquetil, E., Coüasnon, B., Dambreville, F.: A symbol classifier able to reject wrong shapes for document recognition systems. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition-Recent Advances. Springer, Berlin (2000) 209–218 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Miyao, H., Nakano, Y.: Note symbol extraction for printed piano scores using neural networks. IEICE Trans. Inf. and Syst. E79-D (1996) 548–553.
Yadid-Pecht, O., Gerner, M., Dvir, L., Brutman, E., Shimony, U.: Recognition of handwritten musical notes by a modified neocognitron. Machine Vision and Applications 9 (1996) 65–72.
Yang, D., Webster, J., Rendell, L., Garret, J., Shaw, D.: Management of graphical symbols in a cad environment: a neural network approach. In: Proceedings of Int. Conf. on Tools with AI. (1993) 272–279 Boston, Massachussets.
Cesarini, F., Francesconi, E., Gori, M., Marinai, S., Sheng, J., Soda, G.: A neural-based architecture for spot-noisy logo recognition. In: Proceedings of Fourth IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’97. Volume 1. (1997) 175–179 Ulm, Germany.
Francesconi, E., Frasconi, P., Gori, M., Mariani, S., Sheng, J., Soda, G., Sperduti, A.: Logo recognition by recursive neural networks. In Tombre, K., Chhabra, A., eds.: Graphics Recognition-Algorithms and Systems. Springer, Berlin (1998) Vol. 1389 of LNCS.
Kim, S., Suh, J., Kim, J.: Recognition of logic diagrams by identifying loops and rectilinear polylines. In: Proceedings of Second IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’93. (1993) 349–352 Tsukuba, Japan.
Parker, J., Pivovarov, J., Royko, D.: Vector templates for symbol recognition. In: Proceedings of 15th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. Volume 2. (2000) 602–605 Barcelona, Spain.
Adam, S., Ogier, J., Cariou, C., Gardes, J., Mullot, R., Lecourtier, Y.: Combination of invariant pattern recognition primitives on technical documents. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition-Recent Advances. Springer, Berlin (2000) 238–245 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Arias, J., Lai, C., Surya, S., Kasturi, R., Chhabra, A.: Interpretation of telephone system manhole drawings. PRL 16 (1995) 355–369.
Boatto, L., Consorti, V., Del Buono, M., Di Zenzo, S., Eramo, V., Espossito, A., Melcarne, F., Meucci, M., Morelli, A., Mosciatti, M., Scarci, S., Tucci, M.: An interpretation system for land register maps. Computer 25 (1992) 25–33.
Samet, H., Soffer, A.: A legend-driven geographic symbol recognition system. In: Proceedings of 12th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (b). (1994) 350–355 Jerusalem, Israel.
Samet, H., Soffer, A.: Marco: Map retrieval by content. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 18 (1996) 783–797.
De Stefano, C., Tortorella, F., Vento, M.: An entropy based method for extracting robust binary templates. Machine Vision and Applications 8 (1995) 173–178.
Armand, J.: Musical score recognition: a hierarchical and recursive approach. In: Proceedings of Second IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’93. (1993) 906–909 Tsukuba, Japan.
Doermann, D., Rivlin, E., Weiss, I.: Applying algebraic and differential invariants for logo recognition. Machine Vision and Applications 9 (1996) 73–86.
Soffer, A., Samet, H.: Using negative shape features for logo similarity matching. In: Proceedings of 14th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (1). (1998) 571–573.
Suda, P., Bridoux, C., Kammerer, Maderlechner, G.: Logo and word matching using a general approach to signal registration. In: Proceedings of Fourth IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’97. Volume 1. (1997) 61–65 Ulm, Germany.
Lee, H., Lee, M.: Understanding mathematical expressions using procedure-oriented transformation. PR 27 (1994) 447–457.
Yu, Y., Samal, A., Seth, C.: A system for recognizing a large class of engineering drawings. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 19 (1997) 868–890.
Okazaki, A., Kondo, T., Mori, K., Tsunekawa, S., Kawamoto, E.: An automatic circuit diagram reader with loop-structure-based symbol recognition. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 10 (1988) 331–341.
Jorge, J., Fonseca, M.: A simple approach to recognise geometric shapes interactively. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition-Recent Advances. Springer, Berlin (2000) 266–274 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Yu, B.: Automatic understanding of symbol-connected diagrams. In: Proceedings of Third IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’95. (1995) 803–806 Montreal, Canada.
Tombre, K., Dori, D.: Interpretation of engineering drawings. In Bunke, H., Wang, P., eds.: Handbook of character recognition and document image analysis. World Scientific Publishing Company (1997) 457–484.
Antoine, D., Collin, S., Tombre, K.: Analysis of technical documents: The REDRAW system. In Baird, H., Bunke, H., Yamamoto, K., eds.: Structured document image analysis. Springer Verlag (1992) 385–402.
Madej, D.: An intelligent map-to-CAD conversion system. In: Proceedings of 1st. Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (1991) 602–610 Saint Malo, France.
Randriamahefa, R., Cocquerez, J., Fluhr, C., Pépin, F., Philipp, S.: Printed music recognition. In: Proceedings of Second IAPR Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, ICDAR’93. (1993) 898–901 Tsukuba, Japan.
Ramel, J., Boissier, G., Emptoz, H.: A structural representation adapted to handwritten symbol recognition. In Chhabra, A., Dori, D., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Recent Advances. Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2000) 228–237 Vol. 1941 of LNCS.
Kasturi, R., Bow, S., El-Masri, W., Shah, J., Gattiker, J., Mokate, U.: A system for interpretation of line drawings. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 12 (1990) 978–992.
Ventura, A., Schettini, R.: Graphic symbol recognition using a signature technique. In: Proceedings of 12th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (b). (1994) 533–535 Jerusalem, Israel.
Wilfong, G., Sinden, F., Ruedisueli, L.: On-line recognition of handwritten symbols. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 18 (1996) 935–940.
Ablameyko, S.: An Introduction to Interpretation of Graphic Images. SPIE Optical Engineering Press (1997)
Dosch, P., Masini, G., Tombre, K.: Improving arc detection in graphics recognition. In: Proceedings of 15th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. Volume 2. (2000) 243–246 Barcelona, Spain.
Ablameyko, S., Bereishik, V., Frantskevich, O., Homenko, M., Paramonova, N.: Knowledge-based recognition of crosshatched areas in engineering drawings. In Amin, A., Dori, D., Pudil, P., Freeman, H., eds.: Advances in Pattern Recognition. Vol. 1451 of LNCS (1998) 460–467.
Lladós, J., Martí, E., López-Krahe, J.: A Hough-based method for hatched pattern detection in maps and diagrams. In: Proceedings of 5th Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (1999) 479–482 Bangalore, India.
Fahmy, H., Blonstein, D.: A graph grammar programming style for recognition of music notation. Machine Vision and Applications 6 (1993) 83–99.
Landay, J., Myers, B.: Sketching interfaces: Toward more human interface design. IEEE Computer 34 (2001) 56–64.
Wenyin, L., Jin, X., Qian, W., Sun, Z.: Inputing composite graphic objects by sketching a few constituent simple shapes. In: Proceedings of Fourth IAPR Work, on Graphics Recognition. (2001) 73–84 Kingston, Canada.
Blostein, D., et al.: User interfaces for on-line diagram recognition. In: Proceedings of Fourth IAPR Work. on Graphics Recognition. (2001) 95–106 Kingston, Canada.
Paek, S., Smith, J.: Detecting image purpose in world-wide documents. In Lopresti, D., Zhou, J., eds.: Document Recognition V. SPIE, Bellingham, Whashington, USA (1998) 151–158 Vol. 3305 of Proceedings of SPIE.
Duda, R., Hart, P., Stork, D.: Pattern Classification and Scene Analysis. John Wiley and Sons, New York (2000)
Fu, K.: Syntactic Pattern Recognition and Applications. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J. (1982)
Jain, A., Duin, R., Mao, J.: Statistical pattern recognition: a review. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 22 (2000) 4–37.
Pavlidis, T.: Structural Pattern Recognition. Springer-Verlag, New York (1977)
Trier, O., Jain, A., Taxt, T.: Feature extraction methods for character recognition-a survey. PR 29 (1996) 641–662.
Furuta, M., Kase, N., Emori, S.: Segmentation and recognition of symbols for handwritten piping and instrument diagram. In: Proceedings of the 7th IAPR Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. (1984) 626–629.
Lin, X., Shimotsuji, S., Minoh, M., Sakai, T.: Efficient diagram understanding with characteristic pattern detection. Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing 30 (1985) 84–106.
Lladós, J.: Combining Graph Matching and Hough Transform for Hand-Drawn Graphical Document Analysis. Application to Architectural Drawings. PhD thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Université de Paris 8 (1997)
Burr, D.: Elastic matching of line drawings. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 3 (1981) 708–713.
Doermann, D.: The indexing and retrieval of document images: A survey. Technical report, University of Maryland (1998) Technical Report CS-TR-3876.
Casacuberta, F., de Antonio, M.: A greedy algorithm for computing approximate median strings. In: VII Spanish Simposium on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. (1997) 193–198 Barcelona.
Wong, A., You, M.: Entropy and distance of random graphs with application to structural pattern recognition. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 7 (1985) 599–609.
Cordella, L., Foggia, P., Genna, R., Vento, M.: Prototyping structural descriptions: an inductive learning approach. In Amin, A., Dori, D., Pudil, P., Freeman, H., eds.: Advances in Pattern Recognition. Springer Verlag, Berlin (1998) 339–348.
Valveny, E., Martí, E.: Learning structural descriptions of graphic symbols using deformable template matching. In: Proceedings of 6th Int. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition. (2001) Seattle, USA.
Messmer, B.: Efficient Graph Matching Algorithms for Preprocessed Model Graphs. PhD thesis, University of Bern (1995)
Sossa, H., Horaud, R.: Model indexing: The graph-hashing approach. In: Proceedings of IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. (1992) 811–814 Champaign, Illinois.
Liu, W., Dori, D.: A protocol for performance evaluation of line detection algorithms. Machine Vision and Applications 9 (1997) 240–250.
Liu, W., Dori, D.: A proposed scheme for performance evaluation of graphics/text separation algorithms. In Tombre, K., Chhabra, A., eds.: Graphics Recognition: Algorithms and Systems. Springer, Berlin (1998) 359–371 Vol. 1389 of LNCS.
Aksoy, S., Ye, M., Schauf, M., Song, M., Wang, Y., Haralick, R., Parker, J., Pivovarov, J., Royko, D., Sun, C., Farneboock, G.: Algorithm performance contest. In: Proceedings of 15th. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition. Volume 4. (2000) 870–876 Barcelona, Spain.
Yamada, H., Yamamoto, K., Hosokawa, K.: Directional mathematical morphology and reformalized Hough transformation for the analysis of topographic maps. IEEE Trans. on PAMI 15 (1993) 380–387.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lladós, J., Valveny, E., Sánchez, G., Martí, E. (2002). Symbol Recognition: Current Advances and Perspectives. In: Blostein, D., Kwon, YB. (eds) Graphics Recognition Algorithms and Applications. GREC 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2390. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45868-9_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45868-9_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44066-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45868-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive